Wednesday, November 30, 2016

UN ruling to free WikiLeaks’ Assange to stand after British appeal rejected

Published time: 30 Nov, 2016 19:10Edited time: 30 Nov, 2016 19:51

The United Nations has rejected a UK appeal against its previous ruling in favor of Julian Assange as “inadmissible," thus requiring both London and Stockholm to end the WikiLeaks founder’s "arbitrary detention."

Earlier this year, a case was concluded at the UN, in which the body instructed the UK and Sweden to take immediate steps to ensure the WikiLeaks founder’s liberty, protection and enjoyment of fundamental human rights.

The UK has appealed the ruling twice, with the UN rejecting its second appeal on Wednesday by pronouncing it “not admissible," Justice for Assange reported, adding that the decision marks the end to London's "attempt to overturn the ruling."

“Now that all appeals are exhausted, I expect that the UK and Sweden will comply with their international obligations and set me free," a statement by Assange read, with the fugitive whistleblower calling his detention "an obvious and grotesque injustice."

The recent development in the Assange case at the UN forces the UK and Sweden - which are parties to his case - "to immediately put an end to Mr. Assange’s arbitrary detention and afford him monetary compensation," Justice for Assange stated, adding that a failure to do so would undermine the UN human rights' protection system.

Julian Assange faces potential, but as yet unfiled charges over rape allegations in Stockholm that date back to 2010. The whistleblower has always denied the accusations, saying that being taken to Sweden would pave the way for a further extradition to the US, where the government has launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks following a 2010 diplomatic cables leak.

He has been sheltered by the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since August 2012. Earlier this month, Swedish investigators came to interview Assange inside the embassy concerning rape charges, with the whistleblower saying he has "cooperated fully" with them.

What’s Going On With Julian Assange and WikiLeaks? Here Are 4 TheoriesKate Samuelson @katesamuelson Oct. 17, 2016 Rumors are flying after cryptic tweets published on Sunday

http://time.com/4532984/wikileaks-julian-assange-theories/

1. Julian Assange is dead

On Sunday, before Wikileaks tweeted about Assange’s internet access being “intentionally severed,” the verified account, which has 3.7 million followers, sent three tweets which they called ‘pre-commitments’ and appeared to be written in an encrypted code.

This fueled speculation that Assange had died, and the tweets were a “dead man’s keys” or “dead man’s switch” – encryption codes revealing highly classified secrets to be unveiled in the case of his death. “Praying for Julian. I hope he isn’t dead. This does look like an emergency dead man’s switch,” wrote one Reddit user.

But these tweets likely do not mean Assange is dead, Gizmodo reported. “‘Pre-commitment’ in this case is a references to a cryptographic scheme to prevent unreleased information from being tampered with. Essentially those unique codes are proof to anyone reading the documents in the future that their contents remain unchanged: alteration to the leaks will likewise alter those 64-character codes,” the article explained.

In any case, the WikiLeaks account has tweeted several times since the “pre-commitments” went out with no mention of its founder’s supposed death.

Voting patterns in TIME’s ongoing Person of the Year reader’s poll suggest that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is seen as a relatively more influential figure among European participants than among those in the United States.

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Among European voters, Trump’s closest contender is Vladimir Putin, who has likewise received 11% of the “yes” votes cast there. He was tied with Julian Assange in the U.S., with 8% of “yes” votes each.

Man 'cured' of prostate cancer after doctors shock tumour to death with testosterone

Sarah Knapton, science editor 30 NOVEMBER 2016 • 11:30PM

A man with advanced prostate cancer is believed to be cured after doctors 'shocked' his tumour to death with huge amounts of testosterone.

The result has been described as 'unexpected' and 'exciting' because most prostate cancer therapies work by depriving tumours of testosterone, because cancer uses it as a fuel.

Other seriously ill men taking part in the same trial showed responses that astounded scientists, with tumours shrinking and the progress of their disease halted.

Levels of Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA), a blood marker used to monitor prostate cancer, also fell in the majority of the 47 participants.

One individual whose PSA levels dropped to zero after three months and shows no remaining trace of the disease after 22 cycles of treatment appears to be cured, said the researchers.

Professor Sam Denmeade, from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, US, who led the study, said: ""Our goal is to shock the cancer cells by exposing them rapidly to very high followed by very low levels of testosterone in the blood. The results are unexpected and exciting.

"We are still in the early stages of figuring out how this works and how to incorporate it into the treatment paradigm for prostate cancer.

"Many of the men have stable disease that has not progressed for more than 12 months.

"I think we may have cured one man whose PSA dropped to zero after three months and has remained so now for 22 cycles. His disease has all disappeared."

All of the patients had spreading cancer that was resistant to treatment with two of the latest hormone therapy drugs, abiraterone and enzalutamide.

The trial involved three cycles of "bipolar androgen therapy" (BAT) which involves alternately flooding and starving the body of the male hormone testosterone.

The treatment is revolutionary because testosterone is generally assumed to fuel prostate cancer. For decades men with advanced and spreading prostate cancer have been treated by cutting off the supply of testosterone or blocking its effects.

In contrast upping testosterone in a man with prostate cancer is generally considered similar to pouring petrol on a fire.

Yet laboratory experiments had hinted that blasting tumours with high levels of the hormone might suppress or even kill prostate cancer cells.

The men received high dose injections of testosterone once every 28 days. At the same time, they were given a drug that stopped testosterone being produced naturally by the testicles.

Prof Denmeade said it was still not clear how the treatment worked, but it appeared to involve cell signalling and part of the process of cell division. Large doses of testosterone also seemed to cause prostate cancer cells to make breaks in their DNA.

Cancer cells stopped dividing and turned "senescent", meaning they "become like old men who sit around and tell stories but don't make much trouble", said the professor.

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Ellison has spoken at a convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Yet ISNA has actually admitted its ties to Hamas, which styles itself the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Justice Department actually classified ISNA among entities “who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood.”

It gets worse. In 2008, Ellison accepted $13,350 from the Muslim American Society (MAS) to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The Muslim American Society is a Muslim Brotherhood organization: “In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation’s major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members.” That’s from the Chicago Tribune in 2004, in an article that is now carried on the Muslim Brotherhood’s English-language website, Ikhwanweb.

Also, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) raised large amounts of for Ellison’s first campaign, and he has spoken at numerous CAIR events. Yet CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) during a 2008 trip to Saudi Arabia met with a radical Muslim cleric who endorsed killing U.S. soldiers and with the president of a bank used to pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

Ellison, now a leading candidate to head the Democratic National Committee, was brought to Saudi Arabia for a two-week trip by the Muslim American Society (MAS), a group founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood to act as its “overt arm” in the United States.

Details of Ellison’s religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia are scarce, but photographs discovered by the Washington Free Beacon show that Ellison met with controversial figures during the trip.

A photo album of Ellison’s hajj trip posted by MAS’s Minnesota chapter includes a picture of the congressman meeting with Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, who was vice president of a Muslim Brotherhood-created group that in 2004 issued a fatwa urging “jihad” against U.S. troops in Iraq and supported the Palestinians’ Second Intifada against Israel.

Keith Ellison with Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah

“The Jihad-waging Iraqi people’s resistance to the foreign occupation … is a Shari’a duty incumbent upon anyone belonging to the Muslim nation,” the fatwa said, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Bin Bayyah’s group, the International Association of Muslim Scholars, issued the fatwa after a conference in Beirut, Lebanon.

The group was founded by Yusuf Qaradawi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader who was banned from visiting the United States because of his calls to kill Jews and Americans.

Bin Biyyah issued an additional fatwa in 2009, shortly after his meeting with Ellison, “barring all forms of normalization with Israel.”

Ellison also took time on his trip to meet with Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, the president of a Saudi Arabia-based bank that funnels millions of dollars to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel.

Ali’s bank, the Islamic Development Bank, maintains the Al-Quds Intifada Fund and the Al-Aqsa Fund, which were established in 2000 to fund Palestinian terrorism and provide money to the families of Palestinian “martyrs.” The funds were established with an initial investment of $200 million.

Ali said his bank—which is referred to as the “Bank of the Intifada” by Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro College Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust—is responsible “for the smooth functioning of the two funds” and that there is “no delay” in paying families of “martyrs.”

“There was no delay in paying financial assistance to the families of Palestinian martyrs,” Ali said in 2001. “We have started paying them soon after receiving the money.”

Ellison’s congressional office has not responded to numerous requests for comment on his trip.

Ellison told congressional investigators on the House Ethics Committee that he did not have any “meetings of an official nature” on his trip and “instead undertook only the more personal itinerary scheduled by the Muslim American Society.”…

“The notion that a sitting congressman would meet with a man whose organization only four years earlier had issued a fatwa calling for fighting Americans in Iraq once again illustrates the truly outrageous depth of Rep. Ellison’s affiliation with Islamist groups,” Shideler said….

SHOCKING footage of cars burning out in Stockholm has emerged as the fire epidemic continues to spread uncontrolled throughout crisis-hit Sweden.

By Lizzie Stromme, The Express, Nov 30, 2016

The Scandinavian country has been plagued with arsonist thugs setting vehicles alight, with hundreds of cars burning out since 2015.In 2016 alone, more than 70 cars have been destroyed as police struggle to combat the increasing violence and criminal activity in the famously liberal country.

The latest video shows three cars in Hallunda in southern Stockholm engulfed by flames as firefighters battle to put out the blaze.

Overnight Sunday another car was also reported to be burning out in the crime hotbed, which was heavily hit by arson attacks in 2015.

Migrant blames ‘racist Swedes’ for car fires attacks.

Hallunda was one of the cities which was placed on Sweden’s National Criminal Investigation Service’s list over “no-go” zones due to the police force’s increased lack of control over anti-social behaviour.In February, Express.co.uk reported the Scandinavian country had seen a huge surge in crime since the start of the migrant crisis in Europe – with a rise in sex assaults, drug dealing and children carrying weapons.At the time around 50 areas were put on a “blacklist” which are then divided into three categories from “risk areas” to “seriously vulnerable” as it was announced Stockholm had over 20 no-go areas where over 75,000 people live.However, the figure was increased to 55 in September as the Swedish police force face a recruitment crisis, with on average three officers handing in their notice every day.

Hallunda, with a population with just over 14,000, was one of the areas where it was claimed violence was flourishing due to high immigration, low employment rates and bad living conditions.In 2015 alone Sweden, with a population of 9.5million, received over 160,000 asylum applications, resulting in the country closing its internal borders despite being a member of the Schengen Area, in a desperate attempt to halt the migrant influx.The report also said children aged 12 carry weapons for older criminals and 70 cars and buildings were set on fire in an arson spate last year.The southern city of Malmo suffered a surge of violence over the summer, as almost a 100 car fires ripped through the country’s third-largest city.

Rogers was born on the Dog Iron Ranch in Indian Territory, near present-day Oologah, Oklahoma. The house he was born in had been built in 1875 and was known as the "White House on the Verdigris River".[2] His parents, Clement Vann Rogers (1839–1911) and Mary America Schrimsher (1838–1890), were both of part Cherokee ancestry, making Rogers himself 9/32 (just over 1/4) Cherokee.[6] Rogers quipped that his ancestors did not come over on the Mayflower, but they "met the boat".[7] His mother was quarter-Cherokee and a hereditary member of the Paint Clan.[8] She died when Will was 11, and his father remarried less than two years after her death.

"The anchor is "despised" by fellow on-air talent. And FOX insiders describe how it's gotten only worse since the release of her book, which is expected to end the holidays under 500,000 total copies sold. [Megyn refused to promote her book on both O'Reilly and Hannity, foreshadowing a move.]

Zucker at CNN would compensate her salary with heavy promotion and synergy across all TIME WARNER outlets.

A top source close to the action describes how Megyn would be an immediate international star at CNN. "It's the opportunity of lifetime."

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that he was preparing a bill that would protect from deportation immigrants who’d entered the United States illegally as children, because “it’s the right thing to do.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday that he was preparing a bill that would protect from deportation immigrants who’d entered the United States illegally as children, because “it’s the right thing to do.”

Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said he was crafting the bill in anticipation of President-elect Donald Trump revoking President Barack Obama’s 2012 directive that protects 740,000 so-called “Dreamers” from being deported and allows them to obtain work permits.

“I hope members of Congress will say, ‘Listen, if we repeal the executive order the right thing to do – the thing that will make America great – is to deal with these kids humanely and fix this problem comprehensively,’ ” Graham said Thursday. “It’s not a substitute for immigration reform; it’s just the right thing to do.”

Graham said, “I want to have the legislation ready, saying that there is bipartisan support to go ahead and give these people legal status.”

“Whatever status they have today, to continue that for a period of time so we can work this out,” he added. “I don’t see how we help the cause of fixing immigration reform to entice people out of the shadows and pull the rug out from under them. I don’t want to do that.”

Trump, during the presidential campaign, vowed to rescind Obama’s immigration executive orders. Many congressional Democrats and groups supporting a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws have called on Trump to reconsider.

“I want Trump to do the right thing, which would be to repeal the executive order but not ruin these kid’s lives until we have a chance to fix it,” Graham said.

The president-elect will travel to Cincinnati, Ohio, for the first of several stops on his victory lap.A rally will take place at US Bank Arena at 19:00 EST (00:00 GMT), the same venue where Mr Trump drew crowds of 15,000 people at a raucous rally on the campaign trail in late October.

Modern strategists must appreciate how Thucydides points out history’s utility in contextualising human decision making, emotions, and actions—particularly in understanding fear, honour, and interest as the root causes for war. The perception of these inherently human attributes is fundamental to a state’s conception of its vital interests and in turn its political objective. This dynamic is most clearly articulated when Thucydides states that “the growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.”[9] The Peloponnesian War demonstrates that power transitions are difficult and can force the creation of complex, often volatile, alliances that undermine the stability they seek to create.[10] The Corcyra–Corinth debate in Book One shows how local conflicts can take on larger dimensions in a nascent power struggle based on such complex alliance structures. Under these circumstances rational political objectives can become skewed by fear, honour, and interest, in turn destabilising the existing order and bringing power struggles closer to all out war.[11] This is a subject of particular relevance for contemporary strategic calculations, where the United States’ alliances in both Europe and Asia still have the potential to lead to war with Russia and China based on local miscalculations or threats to the interests of junior alliance partners. Under such conditions these alliances create significant risk of conflagration through a response driven by fear and honour, which may in fact be counter to the United States’ actual interests.

Thucydides tells us there is a tipping point where a rising power becomes too powerful to contain. By this point, conflict between near equals may present as an inevitability, particularly when junior allies are agitating for action from the dominant partner. In such circumstances, war’s political objective can be heavily influenced by fearing the costs of not going to war as much as a fear of war itself. However, as demonstrated by Sparta and Athens, this decision is also shaped by a state’s prevailing strategic and military culture.[12] Sparta was the established power seeking to maintain the status quo, while Athens was the rising, revisionist power wishing to reshape the world to suit its interests.[13] Therefore at the outset of the war Thucydides is able to explain how one empire’s honour sparked another’s fear, which caused the interests of both to clash. This dynamic allowed alliance politics to push tensions to a breaking point such that it became a question of which side could justify first the use of military power to suit its interests.

THUCYDIDES AND THE CHARACTER OF WAR

If the nature of war and humanity made the conflict inevitable, it was the character of the Peloponnesian War and its link to strategic and military culture that marked it as a tragedy, and therefore an important text for contemporary strategists. Each time Athens overreaches, it seems to suffer reversals to the detriment of their existing position.[14] This demonstrates the immaturity of their strategic culture, which seemed to be based on brash hopefulness rather than dour circumspection.[15] Indeed, Thucydides describes the difference between the protagonists as “the slowness and want of energy of the Spartans, as contrasted with the dash and enterprise of their opponents.”[16] While this comparison seems unfavourable to Sparta, it was this very way of life that gave them stability and continuity of strategic culture, which, perhaps, led to more effective long-term decision-making. In contrast, Athenian culture was, in Thucydides’ estimation, increasingly marked by spasmodic strategy-making and an accompanying impulsiveness in warfare, two factors that contributed heavily to their eventual defeat.[17]

Thucydides demonstrates that the character of war is emergent, dynamic, and best understood through the medium of combat, where any flaws in strategic and military culture are laid bare. ...

How this translates these days in countering the muzzie threat I don't know. Their peculiar and death loving brand of insanity didn't exist in his day...nor did weapons of mass destruction....

Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis Once Wrote A Letter On The Importance Of Reading, And It’s A Must Read

The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed (successfully or unsuccessfully) before. It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

Ryan has offered a proposal he says would give patients and doctors more control and foster competition among insurers.

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The proposal would provide tax credits for obtaining coverage and improve Health Savings Accounts by allowing premiums to be paid from them and increasing the amount of before-tax money that can be contributed to them.

The plan also calls for improvements to Medicaid and privatizing Medicare.

“Few individuals in the field of national security are as respected and admired as Jim Mattis,” Thornberry said. “His nomination as Secretary of Defense is an excellent selection, and I am grateful for his willingness to serve in this capacity.

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he looks forward to beginning the confirmation process “as soon as possible” in the new year.

“General Mattis has a clear understanding of the many challenges facing the Department of Defense, the U.S. military, and our national security,” McCain said. “America will be fortunate to have General Mattis in its service once again.”

“I think it’s just exciting that he even wants to spend the time to acknowledge the people that brought him to the place that he is,” said 71-year-old Terry Babic, who is retired but still does radio broadcasting.

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“Sure, some of his tweets could be worded better,” said William Kelly, an 18-year-old student at the University of Cincinnati who voted for the first time last month. “I think some of the stuff he says might be straightforward and off the cuff and sure, not what you want to hear, but it’s what we need to hear because it’s true.”

Mr Kelly, wearing a Trump hat, cited the deal reached to keep 1000 jobs at an air conditioner plant in Indiana from being shifted to Mexico as proof that the President-elect was a man of action.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.